


Not Quite Right

by WillofDark



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, almost relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 03:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4903213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WillofDark/pseuds/WillofDark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus Kane is not a man who get second chances. He don't deserve such a gift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Quite Right

Marcus did not often get new chances. Throughout his whole life he had worked hard. When he was younger he had set a goal. He went through test after test, both in and out of school. He wanted to prove and show his abilities. He let his mind get probed and searched for the satisfaction of the rulers, the choosers. He endured it because he wanted to be one of them. He wanted to be a ruler and enforce the laws. He thrived to one day bear the same crest on his chest that they wore. He wasn't by any means obsessed, no never that. It was an ambition to which he was willing to sacrifice many things for, and he did.

He remembers that he was rarely chosen first in his childhood. It wasn't that nobody loved him. His mother loved him. She had said it everyday to him, and her love is still to this day engraved in his very heart. His father loved him. He knows that now. Though, as a seven year old it was difficult for his mind to wrap up and understand why his father left. Marcus thought that he had done something wrong, behaved badly. But now Marcus knew his father had loved him dearly: That it wasn't his fault. His mother Vera always tried to tell him that, but her words never fully reached him.

Everything is a luxury in space and Marcus had to learn that the hard way. Whole families, friendships even love are a luxury that no one can afford.

When he found out this little important detail as a sixteen year old he started to plan. Separating himself emotionally from the few friends he had was the first step. He did it to himself, too. There was no room for mistakes. Every pain and every loss. Every glimpse of light. Everything was looked down upon. Coldly and logically with no emotions. He scraped himself of the young boy who listened to his mother’s tales with shining dark eyes. He made himself the ultimate machine. He made sure to only follow the written laws and do whatever was needed to keep everything under control.

He should have seen it coming. The small cracks of light in his life. After all, he’s a law enforcer. Rules gets broken. Machines rusts. He _should_ have been prepared.

The first person who guided and supported him was his mother. Later, when he was more aware and his plans already were set in place he only had himself. Sacrifice comes at a _price_. To this today he still struggles to understand how _she_ came into his life. Somehow she did and he doesn’t think he has the strength to sacrifice her too.

She got on his nerves. Literally. She stuck a needle in his arm after promising that it wouldn’t hurt. Marcus couldn’t recall a time where he had felt more insulted. He wasn’t some little child to be _promised_ safety.

She made him angry. She argued with him back and forth and he learned to fight back with just as much. He associated with her in ten years. He became a drinking companion to her husband and he met her daughter. Cheeky girl.

He even got himself involved with her best friend. It was never love. Marcus Kane didn’t love. If he did then it was hidden behind layers and layers of self doubt and repulsion. The sex was good and Callie was a good looking and mature woman. It wasn’t that he had lacked company. Marcus knew he was handsome and tall. He took compliments from the few who dared. He took pleasure where he could find it and was offered, if only to satisfy and sedate his needs.

 _More_ reality came crashing down on all. It reached him and tied him down. He should not have let his guards down. He should have been observant and criticized everything. Because that was the plan. His plan. But he didn’t and he lost. 

He lost Jake Griffin. His friend. 

He lost Abby Griffin. His something. Marcus wasn’t a fool to believe that he ever had her.

However much she made him curse her for being a nuisance in those ten years, at the end of the week Marcus, Jake and Abby had sat together with a drink in hand. Sometimes only Marcus and Abby, in the absence of Jake. She was there in the weekends and a devil chasing him on week days. After Jake he lost all that. Even Callie. She did stay and endured him more than Abby did but her behavior around him was strained, _I’m tired of you, Marcus_ , and she didn’t smile as much as she did before.

Perhaps more could have been done. Perhaps floating Jake could have been avoided. Perhaps..

By the time Jake was to be floated, Marcus had already put his shields on. Guarded and closed off. Nothing could or ever would penetrate them again.

* * *

He was wrong, as he always is when things concerns her. He wasn’t a fool to call it love at that point. He could call it _lust_ , an urge to claim her, and put a stomp on it, but it wasn’t that either. Whatever it is, he just couldn’t run fast enough to escape it. It caught him and strangled him, demanding for whatever _it_ wanted.

Abby didn’t love him. She loved Jake. She loves her daughter. He was neither. Yet, he could hope. _Hope_ , that was so unfamiliar to him. Did he love Abby? He didn’t know that either. Marcus Kane don’t love. He don’t long for soft lips nor silky skin. He don’t dream about caring honey brown eyes. No, never that.

They landed on the ground. _We’re almost there, Abby._

She devil chased him again. He put the laws above her. He felt pain and guilt. Regret. I _need you to be more than that._

Say it. 

Don’t drop it all out. Machine, remember.

_I need you to be Chancellor._

She was on his mind when he was put in the cellar for days. A prisoner. He wanted to go back to her. He hadn’t liked the way his shields got pulled down _there_. He preferred the kind that melted them slowly, when she’s around.

But his plans always came back to him in dark times. He had to sacrifice himself for his people. For her. He couldn’t choose himself first. Not after everything that he has done. He had killed so many people when there was another way. Even on the ground luxury is limited. _  
_

It’s a human instinct to survive. To fight back. To flee. That’s what Marcus knows and that’s what he has learned. What is he? He thinks about that a lot. On the Ark, he followed the rules and obeyed the orders until he was the one to be obeyed. Abby was the fighter and he wasn’t, but he wanted to be because now he have someone to go back to. Someone to fight back for.

No promises were made. _I was afraid that I wouldn’t see you again_. She said.

He supposed that was the turning point.

* * *

Marcus stood up and looked at the view in front of him. Everything looked small. There was no way to determine what tree or stone stood larger than the other. Everything looked so unimportant. Only the green that covered the area captured the eyes, nothing more.

Marcus had found this place when he had taking one of his walks after a particular tiring day. The cliff was placed over the expanse of ground that surrounded the behind of Camp Jaha. It was his escape from the crowded camp. Here he could sit alone, undisturbed for hours and think.

He didn’t like it one bit. Thinking, that is. And being up here only left him with his thoughts. Thoughts that went austere places, places he had tried to not reach ever again.

By the time he went back to Camp Jaha Marcus would be emotionally disrupt; his face shadowed and his mood, glum. These walks never lead him anywhere. He felt vision less. His body shut down in a way that left him in a grim circle of nightmares.

His disappearance nor his mood swings were missed by the people of Camp Jaha.

* * *

 

Jackson did not hate him. He thought Marcus Kane a difficult person.

He knew worse people; people who threw insults and were just the definition of evil. Marcus Kane is not evil. That is what he had concluded when he had met the man that first time in the control room. Back then, Jackson was only a mere trainee under Doctor Griffin and his job was to observe and learn. His eyes had followed the dark clothed man who came into the control room as if he owned the place. And he did, in a way.

 _Full of himself_ , Jackson had thought.

He had not liked the way his mentor, _Call me Abby, Jackson_ , and Councillor Kane always disagreed. They always disagreed. Every time they were in the same room everyone would hold their breath. The tension and the barely suppressed and simmering confrontation in the room made it difficult for anyone to breath normally. When they _finally_ reached an agreement they would ignore each other.

‘’Don’t worry, Jackson. Kane’s handled.’’ Abby would say when he voiced his concerns after a rough battle of wits.

As time went by, Jackson became accustomed to their regular clashes. He thought that, at least.

Kane damn well _tried_ to float Abby. He had went to confront Kane after the incident, fully knowing the stupidity of that action. He knew it had affected Abby more than she would ever admit. He was enraged, as much as he could be, and had knocked on the door of Marcus Kane and to his surprise he had been invited in. He had been met by silence at first, allowing him to gather the words he wanted to say, which had gotten stuck the moment he had taken in the state of the serious Councillor and Head of Security.  

‘’If you’ve come to tell me off, I would advise you not to. I have had enough of that today. I know what I did.’’ Tired voice. Jackson had retreated quietly out of the room.

That is not to say that Jackson ever forgave Kane, but after that encounter he got an understanding of what world a man of Marcus Kane’s calibre lived in.

Gradually he saw changes. First in Kane and then in Abby. They all had changed since crash landing on the ground but the changes he looked for were different than the survival scars.

He had been told by the people who were in the same station as Abby that Kane had almost sacrificed himself. He got told that Abby had looked distraught and tried to pull Kane down. It didn’t surprise him. Abby is very compassionate and Kane is one of us.

What surprised him the most was how inseparable the two of them got. Jackson began to think that they had something deeper, but then he would notice. He noticed that they never touched the small touches of lovers. They stood close and had some lengthy eye contact, but _touch_ , it seemed, wasn’t a part of them. _Yet_ , Jackson would muse whenever he saw them talking, standing, looking, eating, dying and fighting.

* * *

 

The walk back to camp is draining. Marcus wondered why he even bothered going up there and sit.

His musings about his own behavior were cut short as he reached the gate. Right beside the gate stood the cracks in his armor.

The cracks that always were followed by warmth which seeped through and through him. Abby Griffin was approaching him. Her hair flying around, gently breezed by the wind. If anyone asked him he would deny that he noticed how her hair shone in the light, how her determined eyes did things to him, how glorified he felt at being the center of her very aura, her attention.

 _Beautiful,_ he thought. _And angry._

‘’Three hours, Marcus! That’s a record.’’

‘’Chancellor.’’ He didn’t know what else to say. Of course she would notice that he had sneaked away. Who was he kidding, thinking that he could escape her. To Marcus it seemed that Abby had imprinted her soul on him because whatever he did and wherever he went, she somehow always knew. She might just have done that. Her outgoings and blossoming league with Indra, he shivered slightly, worried him.  

‘’Marcus, you can talk to me.’’ He supposed he could.

‘’Like you talk to me?’’ He could feel her tense at his words, knowing what he was implicating. They hadn’t talked properly about the _important_ things.

If Marcus started talking to her about those he might spill everything out. Tell her how he feels. Tell her about his pain and his thoughts. Those things he could talk to her about but how would she react to the depths of everything he bears? Everything he feels? Abby had her own demons to deal with and some she wasn’t even dealing with. Her daughter's absence for one. She wouldn’t help him slay his demons. Does he even want to? He could put them in a cage but they would forever be there to hiss at him. Make him remember. Pulling him towards darkness.

She gave him a look that told him he was over stepping. He almost laughed. Hadn’t they crossed the line of things down here already?

‘’Abby..’’  Her name whispered, caught by the wind dancing around them like the leafs surrounding them. Looking at her he felt something inside him wanting to burst free. He felt rather than saw his hands automatically going up to touch her.

''Not now.’’ She laid her hand on his shoulder, stopping his movement and gently leading him into the camp. ‘’Let us just sit down.’’

‘’And have a talk?’’

Abby laughed and he supposed that was almost as good as he got.

Perhaps someday he could take his shields down completely. Perhaps they could be more.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading this little fic of mine. I thought about them sharing a kiss (thus, making the fic longer), but it wouldn't exactly fit in this. Troubled souls.


End file.
